posted at 11:03 am on July 28, 2006 by Allahpundit

1. Seixon receives intimidating e-mails from someone who may or may not be former CIA operative Larry Johnson, then gets an anonymous phone call threatening him with death from someone who may or may not be Jason Leopold.
2. A commenter whose gateway just happens to be the same as Dr. Demento’s leaves new comments accusing Goldstein of molesting his son, leading Jeff to shut down his site until this is settled “[o]nce and for all.”
3. Ace accuses Paul from Wizbang of being disingenuous about l’affaire Greenwald in the comments to Paul’s latest post, to which Paul responds by deleting Ace’s comments en masse for what he claims is Ace’s own good. Whereupon Ace writes his own post threatening to turn Paul, a la Frisch, into an Internet verb. Whereupon Paul promptly quits blogging.

Ace to Paul:

Kevin created Wizbang, not you. You are just hitching a ride, given a platform you do not deserve. Why you think you can behave in such a high-handed fashion when you are — and understand that here, I am merely using your own technique of evalutating someone’s worth by their traffic — a goddamned nobody and a freeloading guest in someone else’s house is beyond me.

Yeah, I, uh, hate people who’d have no audience except for their association with better, more popular bloggers.

Anyway. A bad week for the blogosphere. But a great week for scandal!

I promise, I’m going to stick to hard news next week unless Frisch shoots Goldstein or something. In the meantime, it’s Friday, and I have a video that pretty much sums up the week thematically. Thanks for the tip to TV in Japan, which is richly deserving of your bookmark.

Escalation update! Kevin has updated Paul’s post. Is this a threat or not? (Update to the update: Kevin says it’s not. See below.)

Ace’s meltdown is back. Why a blogger who jealously guards his anonymity would even think about doing an expose on another blogger is beyond me….

Goldstein has updated his post, too:

Here’s the situation as it currently stands: I have one generous benefactor who’s promised to help defray some of my legal expenses. But in order to see this through, I’m going to have to shelve at least one of my paid gigs…

Anyway, I’m hoping I won’t be gone long—perhaps I can even muster at least one traditional Friday posting—but as this entire episode is putting a strain on my family, I simply have to get it resolved before I can commence with the idiot dance that I do here every day.

Drop a buck or two in his PayPal if you can spare it.

Update: Kevin has removed the quasi-threat against Ace.

Update: Thinking out loud: will Frisch’s defense be the Magic Girlfriend?

Update: Kevin e-mails to say his comment about Ace’s anonymity wasn’t a threat to out him, it was a reference to one of the elements of the federal “e-annoyance” statute. Using a secret identity while waging a campaign to turn Paul into “an Internet verb” could be considered actionable harassment. I guess.

Blowback

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I didn’t understand a word of the video but I think you may have discovered a possible format for the 2008 Democratic primary debates. I picture Michelle acting as the moderator, using the whistle whenever one of the candidates skirts around the truth. Ratings would go up. The public would be served. What could possibly go wrong?

…That was one of the things that interested me about the project—the strength and beauty of the images as images. I also thought they made a kind of political statement about the current state of anxiety a lot of people are in about the future of the country. Sometimes I just feel like crying about the way things are going.

She is dead nuts on there, most leftists remind me of nothing so much as a bunch of pissed-off, howling toddlers.

When this whole thing started with Glenn G. and his ‘calling out’ of conservatives who didn’t ‘condemn’ something he thought they should, thereby supposedly making them hypocrites for not condeming that after they condemned Deb Frisch, I made one post about it and participated in comments for a few days at other blogs. I didn’t post anything else at my blog about it after the intial post and seeing how things have turned out, I’m glad I restricted it to that one post.

How the hell did things go from exposing Glenn Greenwald for the hyperventilating sockpuppet fruitcake that he is to conservative bloggers slamming each other?

I must admit, I dig lowbrow humor. The whole “Doucheosphere Saga” was funny for awhile. No, it was friggin’ hilarious. Not based on it’s merits mind you, but the creative name-calling was great. But jeebus, GiGi wasn’t worth all this.

It’s one thing for bloggers to fact-check the MSM and other bloggers, and then write about it. (Like exposing Dan Rather’s fake documents, or the work done by the Swift Boat Veterans.) The blogosphere, at its other best, raised money for the tsunami victims and Katrina victims.

It’s another thing entirely for bloggers to descend into elementary school-like ranting about each other “in public.” Some of you “big bloggrs” need to get off that high-horse toy on the playground and stay private.

Stop it, already.

Blog about things you used to blog about that brought us to your site in the first-place. There are bigger fish to fry besides this petty, egotistical BS.

Kevin e-mails to say his comment about Ace’s anonymity wasn’t a threat to out him, it was a reference to one of the elements of the federal “e-annoyance” statute. Using a secret identity while waging a campaign to turn Paul into “an Internet verb” could be considered actionable harassment. I guess.

To quote Don Imus: “That is really just an…that is just an absurd, ridiculous position. I’m just…I’m almost embarrassed that you’ve said that.”

Someone in the midst of this mess, who shall remain nameless but who goes by a 3-letter name, has embarrassed himself more than Greenwald did. Thanks for making conservatives look like the angry, vulgar, lunatic Kos kids.

People are allowed to disagree with you, even strongly. Civility is an indication of maturity. It’s lacking here with more than one of the bloggers, but I’ve lost a lot of respect for one in paticular.

I’ve learned over the years to stay very far away from this kind of um…urination contests. People get carried away with the detached nature of the Net and make obscene and outlandish statements. Bring threats to family in the mix and you have a real problem.

Another problem that those who allow themselves to fall into the “detached nature” thing is the fact that they are not nearly as “detached” or “anonymous” as they think they are.

For everyone involved…grow up or shut down your blog and get a MySpace account.